by Chris Carter
‘That’s what I thought,’ Hunter said. He told officer Travis about his conversation with Rashana Lewis. ‘And I now know how he did it. I know why the safety chain was securely in place when you and your partner got here.’
‘Really, how?’
‘Let me show you.’
They returned to Helen Webster’s apartment. The two forensics agents were still working the bedroom, but they told Hunter that they had collected a buffet of fibers and hairs, together with several fingerprints coming from what looked like two different sources. They could already confirm that one of those sources was Helen Webster. The second was someone with relatively large hands.
Hunter had no doubts that those prints would match Jake Goubeaux’s.
‘OK,’ officer Travis said, addressing Hunter. ‘I can sort of picture the scene now. Boyfriend gets dumped just after Valentine’s, doesn’t take it too well, keeps on calling the victim asking for a new chance. The victim keeps on saying “no”, but still he doesn’t take the hint. So, on Monday evening he decides to drop by for a little face-to-face chat.’ Travis shrugged. ‘Maybe he knocked and she let him in, or maybe he used his own key, because now we know that he had a set.’
Hunter listened, nodding every now and then.
‘He probably had a few drinks before turning up here,’ Travis continued with his deduction. ‘Which would only make matters worse. They argue, loudly. Some of it is overheard by Mrs. Peers from apartment 2815.’ He pointed to the next-door apartment. ‘The victim tells the ex-boyfriend that there’s no getting back together and he loses it. He goes for her throat and starts choking her, maybe not with the intention to kill her, but she passes out anyway, and he freaks. He knows that when she comes to, she will probably report him. Given his track record, he also knows that that would be strike three. He will be put away for a long time.’
‘So he comes up with a plan,’ Hunter said.
Officer Travis agreed with a nod and took over once again. ‘He knows that the victim is bipolar, going in and out of depressed states every now and then. Maybe she had even told him that, during one of those states she had considered suicide in the past.’
‘Possible,’ Hunter said.
‘So he figured that staging a suicide scene was his ticket out, especially if he could make it so it looked like she had been alone, locked inside her apartment. He puts her in bed, undresses her, and slices her wrists.’
‘Very good, Officer Travis,’ Hunter said. ‘I don’t think I could’ve come up with a better theory myself.’
‘Yes, but it still doesn’t explain how he did it. How did he get out and lock the door from the inside?’
‘Cleverly,’ Hunter said, walking back into the bedroom. The officer followed him.
Hunter returned to Helen Webster’s wardrobe and slid the door open.
‘See how everything is precisely organized,’ he said.
Travis nodded.
‘But look at this.’ Hunter indicated the black silk blouse that had fallen on top of some shoes.
‘OK . . .?’ Travis dragged the word out. ‘What about it?’
‘At first I thought that the blouse had just slipped off its hanger,’ Hunter explained. ‘But if you check the rack, there are no empty hangers, which means, there’s a hanger missing.’
Travis frowned.
Hunter reached for another blouse and slipped it off its hanger. ‘Then I realized that Helen Webster only used wire hangers.’ He exited the bedroom, taking the hanger with him. In the living room, he indicated the small stereo on the TV module.
‘Over here, we’re missing a speaker.’
‘Yes, I see that,’ Travis replied.
‘Well, Mr. Jake Goubeaux is a soundman, so I think it’s safe to assume that he knows a thing or two about musical equipment, including stereos like this.’
‘I’d agree.’
‘So he would know that these speakers are magnetic speakers, where strong magnets are part of the motor of the subwoofers.’
Travis chewed his bottom lip again. ‘I didn’t know that.’
Hunter quickly went into the kitchen, picked up the garbage can, and brought it into the living room.
‘I found the other speaker in here,’ he said. ‘Completely pulled apart.’ He dumped the garbage can contents onto the living-room floor. ‘The subwoofer, as you can see, has been smashed to pieces. And I bet that if we take our time collecting all the smashed-up magnet pieces and putting them back together like a jigsaw puzzle, we’ll find that there’s a small piece missing.’
‘Sonofabitch,’ Travis whispered. He was starting to get the picture.
Hunter gloved up, selected a small broken piece of the subwoofer’s magnet, approached the chest of drawers by the east wall, and opened the top drawer. It was full of stationery and office supplies. The topmost item inside the drawer was a tube of superglue.
‘And this is the last piece of our puzzle,’ he said, showing it to Travis.
Hunter reached for the wire hanger, unwound its hook, and unfolded it out. Thirty seconds later, he had a long, crooked piece of hard and strong wire in his hands. He re-twisted and reshaped the hanger until he had an L-shaped, foot-and-a-half-long piece of wire, with a small curved hook at the end of it. He then cautiously superglued the small magnet piece to the tip of the wire hook.
‘And here we have it,’ he said, walking over to the door. Holding the security chain’s wall mounting back in its original place, he tested his new device. The magnet at the tip of his wire hook firmly snapped itself to the circular metal piece at the end of the security chain. Using the wire device, Hunter then slowly and very easily slid the chain all the way across, until it was free from the lock.
‘He probably practiced a few times in here to get the hang of it before stepping out onto the corridor,’ Hunter said. ‘All he needed to do was to bring the door to. The original open-door gap that the security chain provides is more than enough for anyone to be able to push the wire device through, snap it onto the chain, drag the chain over to its lock, carefully prod around until it slots into its spot, and just slide it across to lock it. I’m sure it took him a few tries to get it, but it wouldn’t have taken him long. Once that was done, he closed the door, used his key to lock it, and got out of here. Luckily for us, he bumped into Mr. Grant as he returned home.’
‘Clever sonofabitch,’ Travis said, studying the wire device Hunter had created. ‘When did you figure this out?’
‘The idea came to me when I was leaving Ms. Lewis’ apartment on the fifteenth floor,’ Hunter said. ‘The fridge in her kitchen is covered by fridge magnets. Suddenly everything made sense.’
Travis looked back at the detective. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I’m sorry to have given you such a hard time earlier on. I allowed all the superficial scene readings to guide my judgment. Everything indicated suicide, so I assumed it had to be suicide.’
Hunter shook the officer’s hand.
‘But I guess that’s why you are a detective, and I’m not.’ Travis smiled. ‘So now what?’
‘Now we get a warrant, go arrest Mr. Goubeaux, and take it from there,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m sure that some of the hairs and fingerprints found in Ms. Webster’s room will have come from Jake Goubeaux. If we’re lucky, something might give us a DNA match. But if not, once we put a person like him inside an interrogation room and present him with what we have, it doesn’t take long for whatever bullshit story he had prepared to start showing its cracks. Trust me, Travis, we’ve got him.’
Hunter reached for his phone and called Captain Bolter.
Chapter 9
The captain had listened to Hunter’s entire report without interrupting once.
‘I’ll be Goddamned,’ he said at last. A surprised but satisfied tone found its way into the captain’s voice. ‘I stand corrected, and I guess I owe you an apology, rookie.’
‘No apology necessary, sir. Like I said, just doing my job.’
‘Of course you are, r
ookie. But I do indeed owe you an apology. You did prove me wrong. And in time you will learn that that doesn’t happen very often.’
Hunter said nothing. He heard the faint noise of pages turning coming from the captain’s end.
‘The warrant will be on its way to you soon,’ Captain Bolter finally said. ‘Now go arrest that piece of shit boyfriend . . . Detective Hunter.’
Hunter smiled. It was the first time the captain had called him by his proper title.
More pages turning.
‘When you get back to the RHD, I’ve got something else lined up for you.’
‘Another suicide case, captain?’ Hunter half joked.
‘Not this time, detective.’ There was no play in the captain’s voice anymore. ‘This time we’ll see how good a hunter you really are.’
Read on for a sneak preview of
THE CRUCIFIX KILLER
The first full length thriller featuring Robert Hunter
Ebook ISBN 978-1-84737-841-5
One
Friday, August 3rd, 10:25 a.m.
‘Hello . . . Detective Hunter speaking.’
‘Hello, Robert, I have a surprise for you.’
Hunter froze, almost dropping his coffee cup. He knew that metallic voice very well. He knew when that voice called it meant only one thing – a new, mutilated dead body.
‘Have you heard from your partner lately?’
Hunter’s eyes quickly searched the room in vain for Carlos Garcia.
‘Has anyone heard from Garcia this morning?’ he shouted across the office after pressing the mute button on his cell phone.
The other detectives exchanged silent, puzzled looks and Hunter knew the answer even before it came.
‘Not since yesterday,’ Detective Maurice said shaking his head.
Hunter pressed the mute button once again.
‘What have you done to him?’
‘Do I have your attention now?’
‘What have you done to him?’ Hunter demanded in a firm voice.
‘As I’ve said, it’s a surprise, Robert,’ the metallic voice said laughing. ‘But I’ll give you another chance to make a difference. Maybe this time you’ll put more effort into it. Be at the laundry room down in the basement of the old number 122 Pacific Alley in South Pasadena within the hour. If you bring back-up, he dies. If you don’t make it within the hour, he dies. And trust me, Robert, it’ll be a very slow and painful death.’ The line went dead.
Two
Hunter raced down the stairs of the old building in east LA in giant leaps. The deeper he went, the darker and hotter it got. His shirt was covered in sweat, his tight shoes crushing his feet.
‘Where the hell is this laundry room?’ he whispered as he reached the basement.
A glimmer of light was coming from underneath a closed door at the end of a dark corridor. He ran towards it calling his partner’s name.
No answer.
Hunter pulled out his Wildey Survivor double-action pistol and positioned his back against the wall to the right of the door.
‘Garcia . . .’
Silence.
‘Rookie, are you in there?’
A muffled thud came from inside the room. Hunter cocked his gun and took a deep breath.
‘Fuck it!’
With his back still against the outside wall, he pushed the door open with his right hand and in a well-rehearsed move rotated his body into the room, his gun searching for a target. An unbearable smell of urine and vomit forced him to take a step back coughing violently.
‘Garcia . . .’ he called again from the door.
Silence.
From outside Hunter couldn’t see much. The light bulb that hung from the ceiling above a small wooden table in the center of the room was too weak to illuminate it properly. He drew another deep breath and took a step forward. What he saw made his stomach churn. Garcia had been nailed to a life-size cross inside a Perspex cage. The heavy bleeding from his wounds had created a pool of blood at the base of the cross. He was wearing nothing but his underwear and a barbed-wire crown around his head, the thick metal spikes clearly piercing his flesh. Blood streaking down his face. Garcia looked lifeless.
I’m too late, Hunter thought.
Approaching the cage he was surprised to see a heart monitor inside it. Its line peaking slightly and at steady intervals. Garcia was still alive – just.
‘Carlos!’
No movement.
‘Rookie!’ he shouted.
With great effort Garcia managed to half open his eyes.
‘Hang in there, buddy.’
Hunter surveyed the dimly lit room. It was large, fifty-five feet by forty-five he guessed. The floor was littered with dirty rags, used syringes, crack pipes and broken glass. In the corner, to the right of the entrance door he could see an old and rusty wheelchair. On the wooden table in the center of the room sat a small, portable cassette tape recorder and a single note that read play me first in large red letters. He pressed the play button and the now familiar metallic voice came blasting out of the tiny speaker.
‘Hello Robert, I guess you’ve made it in time.’ Pause.
‘You have no doubt realized that your friend needs your help, but for you to be able to help him you have to play by certain rules . . . my rules. This is a simple game, Robert. Your friend is locked inside a bullet-proof cage, so shooting it won’t help you. On its door you’ll find four colored buttons. One of them opens the cage, the other three – don’t. Your task is quite simple – pick a button. If you press the correct one the door will open, you’ll be able to free your partner and walk out of the room.’
One chance in four to save Garcia – definitely not great odds, Hunter thought.
‘Now here comes the fun part,’ the tape recorder played on. ‘If you press any of the other three buttons an uninterrupted high-voltage current will be sent directly to the wire crown on your friend’s head. Have you ever seen what happens to a human being while he’s being electrocuted?’ the voice said with a chilling laugh. ‘His eyes burst, his skin crinkles like bacon, his tongue recoils into his mouth ready to choke him to death, his blood boils, bursting vessels and arteries open. It’s quite an exquisite scene, Robert.’
Garcia’s heartbeat went into overdrive. Hunter could see the line on the heart monitor screen peaking faster.
‘And now for the really fun part . . .’
Somehow Hunter knew that the electric current trick wouldn’t be the only twist in that room.
‘Behind the cage I’ve placed enough explosives to obliterate the room you’re in. The explosives are attached to the heart monitor and if it gets to read a flatline . . .’ a longer pause this time. Hunter knew what the metallic voice was about to say next.
‘Boom . . . the room blows. So you see Robert, if you press the wrong button, not only will you watch your friend die knowing that you’ve killed him, but you’ll get to die soon after.’
Hunter’s heart was now beating viciously against his chest, sweat dripping from his forehead and stinging his eyes, his hands shaky and clammy.
‘But you have a choice Robert. You don’t have to save your partner, you can just save yourself. Walk away now and leave him to die alone. No one will know except you. Can you live with that? Will you gamble your life for his? Pick a color, you’ve got sixty seconds.’ A loud beep came from the tape recorder before it went silent.
Hunter saw a red digital display above Garcia’s head light up 59, 58, 57 . . .
Three
Five weeks earlier.
Jenny rubbed her eyes as she got up from the busy table at the Vanguard Club in Hollywood, hoping she didn’t look as tired as she felt.
‘Where’re you going?’ D-King asked, sipping his champagne.
Bobby Preston was the best known dealer in northwest Los Angeles, but no one ever called him by his real name, everyone knew him as D-King. The ‘D’ stood for ‘Dealer’ as he would deal in just about anything: drugs, girls, cars, guns –
for the right price he’d supply you with whatever you wanted.
Jenny was by far his most stunning girl. Her body was flawlessly toned and tanned and her perfect face and smile could charm any men on this earth, D-King was sure of it.
‘I just need to retouch my make-up. I’ll be right back babe.’ She blew him a little kiss and left the exclusive VIP area still holding her champagne glass.
Jenny couldn’t handle any more alcohol, not because she was feeling drunk, but because this was her fifth successive night out partying and she’d had enough. She didn’t think her life would turn out this way. She never thought she’d become a hooker. D-King had always assured her that she wasn’t a working girl. She was a high-class entertainer for gentlemen with extremely good taste and obviously a lot of money, but at the end of the day she was having sex for cash. To her that made her a hooker.
Most of Jenny’s clients were perverted old millionaires looking for something they couldn’t get at home. Sex was never your normal run-of-the-mill missionary position. They all wanted their money’s worth. Bondage, BDSM, spanking, watersports, strap-on sex, it didn’t matter. Whatever they were into, she had to provide, but tonight was no working night. She wasn’t being paid by the hour. She wasn’t out with one of her deadbeat clients. She was out with the boss and she had to party until he said it was over.
Jenny had been to the Vanguard Club plenty of times. It was one of D-King’s favorite hangouts. There was no denying that the club was a magnificent luxurious extravaganza. From its enormous dance floor to its laser-light show and great stage. The Vanguard could hold up to two thousand people, and tonight the club was packed to capacity.
Jenny made her way towards the bar closest to the ladies’ room where two barmen seemed rushed off their feet. The entire club was a tremendous buzz of beautiful people, the great majority of them in their twenties and early thirties. Jenny was oblivious to the pair of eyes that followed her from the VIP area to the bar. Eyes that had been on her all night. In fact, they’d been following her for the past four weeks, from nightclub to nightclub and hotel to hotel. Watching her as she pretended to have a good time, as she pleasured each and every one of her clients.